holic position, he joined the Roman Catholic Church. It is
notable, in connection with the general argument, that while the deeper
reasons for such a change do not concern such a sketch as this, he was
again characteristically amused and annoyed with the sentimentalists,
sympathetic or hostile, who supposed he was attracted by ritual, music,
and emotional mysticism. He told such people, somewhat to their
bewilderment, that he had been converted because Rome alone could
satisfy the reason. In his case, of course, as in Newman's and
numberless others, well-meaning people conceived a thousand crooked or
complicated explanations, rather than suppose that an obviously honest
man believed a thing because he thought it was true. He was soon to give
a more dramatic manifestation of his strange taste for the truth.

The attack on political corruption, the next and perhaps the most
important passage in his life, still illustrates the same point,
touching reason and enthusiasm. Precisely because he did know what
Socialism is and what it is not, precisely because he had at least
learned that from the intellectual hardness of the Fabians, he saw the
spot where Fabian Socialism is not hard but soft. Socialism means the
assumption by the State of all the means of production, distribution,
and exchange. To quote (as he often quoted with a rational relish) the
words of Mr. Balfour, that is Socialism and nothing else is Socialism.
To such clear thinking, it is at once apparent that trusting a thing to
the State must always mean trusting it to the statesmen. He could defend
Socialism because he could define Socialism; and he was not helped or
hindered by the hazy associations of the sort of Socialists who
perpetually defended what they never defined. Such men might have a
vague vision of red flags and red ties waving in an everlasting riot
above the fall of top-hats and Union Jacks; but he knew that Socialism
established meant Socialism official, and conducted by some sort of
officials. All the primary forms of private property were to be given to
the government; and it occurred to him, as a natural precaution, to give
a glance at the government. He gave some attention to the actual types
and methods of that governing and official class, into whose power trams
and trades and shops and houses were already passing, amid loud Fabian
cheers for the progress of Socialism. He looked at modern parliamentary
government; he looked at it rationally